Operation theatre management process study: Aravind Eye Hospital vs. Apollo hospitals

Abstract

The concept of focusing on a single product to build on competitive advantage was first proposed by Skinner in his 1974 article “The Focussed Factory”. Recently studies have been done about the implementation of the similar principles in the healthcare sector. The aim of these studies is to understand and eliminate waste and helps the hospitals to improve processes and outcomes, reduce cost, and increase satisfaction among patients, providers and staff. For example, the Meadows Regional Hospital implemented lean management in 2005, training their staff on lean principles and then involving them in analyzing ER processes and developing ways to reduce wait times. The team of ER staff identified 44 action items for reducing times and began to implement the changes over time. The average length of stay for ER patients at Meadows Regional dropped from 247 minutes to 139 minutes in just two years as a result of the employees' efforts (5 Key Principles for Hospitals from Toyota’s Lean Management SystemBecker’s Hospital Review, 2009). Dr. Robert Booth, Chief of Orthopaedic Surgery at Rittenhouse Medical Center, applied the principles of high volume and highly standardized practices to increase the speed of surgery radically (Managing Orthopaedics at Rittenhouse Medical Center- Bohmer, Huckman, Weber, Bozic HBR 2010) No similar study has been published in the Indian healthcare sector and this was our motivation to make a preliminary study on the operation theatre management process in the Indian context. The objective of the study is to understand and contrast the operation theatre management process in a focused speciality hospital like Aravind Eye Hospital with a multi-speciality hospital like Apollo Hospitals. The aim of the project is to find the relative positioning of the two hospitals on the product-process matrix and the efficiency frontier factoring in their vision and strategy.